A. Field of the Invention
Embodiments of this invention are directed generally to biology, medicine, and cardiology. In particular aspects, the invention is related to combination therapy for treating cardiac and cardiovascular disorders and conditions, such as reperfusion injury after acute myocardial infarction (MI).
B. Background
Currently, there are 5 million American with congestive heart failure, with nearly 500,000 new cases being diagnosed every year. Because of the direct costs of care for heart failure, estimated at $10 billion to $38 billion per year, the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services targeted heart failure as the disease most worthy of cost-effective management. Improvement in heart failure treatment in terms of innovative pharmacological strategies is urgently needed in this heart failure epidemic era.
In addition, acute myocardial infarction (MI) is the leading killer in the United States accounting for 54% mortality of total cardiovascular disease-related death (2004 NHLBI Chartbook). Although reperfusion therapy during acute MI with percutaneous coronary intervention (PCI) or thrombolysis salvages myocardium that would ultimately die without reperfusion, rapidly restoring blood flow to myocardium can also cause lethal injury to vulnerable myocardial cells (i.e., reperfusion injury). The restoration of blood flow can lethally compromise oxygen-deprived cells. Reperfusion injury may offset the optimal salvage of myocardium achieved by PCI and/or thrombolysis. Over the last 20 years extensive research efforts have been devoted to develop therapeutic strategies to prevent reperfusion injury.
There is a need for additional compositions and methods for the treatment of cardiac and cardiovascular disorders and myocardial reperfusion injury by limiting infarct-size through pharmacological post-ischemia conditioning reperfusion injury, and post-ischemia conditioning.